


you and me (and me and you)

by orphan_account



Category: Promare (2019)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Angst, Cats, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Mild Language, Post-Canon, Pre-Relationship, lots and lots of love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-22
Updated: 2020-05-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:09:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24314062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: In which Galo has a cat, Lio isnotsick, and there’s a conversation or two over a meal
Relationships: Lio Fotia/Galo Thymos
Comments: 13
Kudos: 82





	you and me (and me and you)

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: non-specific references to events of the movie, feelings of detachment, descriptions of sickness/overwork, mentions of sleep issues
> 
> Anyways, that covers all of the major stuff! This is my very first time writing for Promare and it’s been a while since I’ve seen it, so I’ll admit my grasp on the characters is shaky and the dialogue is questionable at best, but I had fun! I loved the style and setting of promare, and really am looking forwards to getting to dive into it
> 
> Anyways, I hope you enjoy!!

Galo has a cat.

This is inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. Lio is scuffed-up and beaten down, living like it’s not yet set in that he’s  _ alive  _ with his shirt hanging on by a thread and his boots all dirtied and Galo’s hand wrapped around his elbow because otherwise he’d tip-topple right over onto his face. He’s talking, but Lio doesn’t hear a word of it because his legs aren’t working like his legs should, and the big red-and yellow striped jacket weighing on his shoulders doesn’t feel like his jacket should, and his brain is working a mile a minute like no brain should. In his current state cats should be the  _ last _ thing on his mind- whether they belong to Galo or else somehow wriggled their way in through a fourth story window- but Lio is an object in motion and an object in motion stays set in its motion even if that motion amounts to nothing more than incessant observation in the face of imminent exhaustion. So as Galo lightly pushes him over the threshold and into his home, Lio finds his focus shifting to the cat and settling there. 

It’s little, gray, and fluffy, moving so fast that he can’t tell its tail from it’s head. There’s a ringing in his ears that he’s relatively sure is coming from a bell around its neck, because it’s been a week since the worst of their situation has passed and of all the stupid little physical complications and injuries he’d discovered during the rescue efforts issues with his hearing had (miraculously) not been one of them. It’s darting here and there, batting at a small kick-toy shaped like a bright red mouse and meowing in strong, loud yowls. Lio’s head bobs back and forth, eyes trailing it as it darts in one big circle and then two straight lines, puttering around without a care in the world as it’s legs tense and its back bows. It’s a good cat. It’s a great cat. Galo’s still talking. 

“-find something to eat, and then we can sleep and start figuring out a real game plan tomorrow,” Galo’s saying. His hand is warm like his voice is warm like his side is warm. He has a cat. “No good ever comes from working on an empty stomach! Or sleeping, or thinking, or anything really. I can’t concentrate if I haven’t eaten, and we’ve gotta be able to concentrate on something as important as getting some rest, so how do you think we should do this? I can cook if you want, or you can cook if you want, or we  _ both  _ can cook if you want and it’ll be like this great bonding experience. It’ll bring us closer and stuff.”

“You have a cat,” Lio tells him. 

Galo looks taken aback but slides back into his easy smile within the second, tapping a steady pattern onto Lio’s shoulder as he guides him towards the couch. “You mean Palooza? Yeah, I- hey man don’t look at  _ me  _ like that, I didn’t name her, she was adopted from a shelter. We call her Pal for short.”

Lio doesn't know what sort of face he had pulled, but the pout that Galo put on because of it drags a light laugh deep from the center of his chest, the sort that hitches and bubbles up into loud bellows and is as undignified as any one laugh can be. Lio’s horrified (he’s got a reputation) but then Galo’s expression slingshots from  _ justifiably disgruntled  _ to  _ inordinately pleased,  _ and he lets his hand slide down from Lio’s shoulder and over his forearm, down and down until their palms are pressed close together and their fingertips brush in a familiar pattern of one-twos and suddenly laughing until he’s blue in the face doesn’t seem like such a bad idea after all.

“Palooza,” Lio echoes once all the laughter’s torn on through him. His stomach growls somewhere on his peripherals, and his arms are like sticks swamped beneath the red-and-yellow striped jacket that probably belongs to Galo if the lingering scent of pizza is anything to go by. Lio is very hungry. He is very tired.“Your cat’s name is Palooza.”

“Pal.”

“Palooza.”

Galo huffs, but concedes with a knock of their shoulders, and they continue on as one half of Lio’s brain catalogues the apartment-  _ studio, one couch, one bed, three shelves, two points of entry, two points of exit-  _ and the other watches Pal prowl along the edge of the windowsill, stretched low and slinking. She has big brown eyes and white tufts of fur poking out from her inner ears and a tail that curls like a pillar of smoke. She looks soft. She’s a very good cat.

“ _ How  _ do you have a cat?” Lio asks a moment later, because his in-motion, mile-a-minute mind can’t let him have nice things like cute partners with cute cats, so obviously  _ something  _ has to be wrong here. “You work long hours. Neither one of us has stopped or- or- left the relief sites for a  _ week,  _ so  _ how  _ do you have a cat?”

“She’s not really  _ my  _ cat? More like  _ our  _ cat, or  _ the  _ cat,” Galo explains without explaining anything at all, letting go of his hand to sit down on the couch. Lio gives one last glance around the apartment to be sure he takes note of all the fine details, like the blue woven rugs and the dishes in the sink, and then joins him. The cushions of the couch are bright green and very soft, big enough and worn enough that he’s slowly sinking into them. Between that and the jacket and the way that Galo towers over him even while sitting, between that and the scope of his goals and the realities of his situation, Lio is feeling very small at the moment. “I’ve got joint custody with my next door neighbor, Ms. Anderson! She works from home and is really, really nice, so we worked something out.”

Lio blinks. He hasn’t ever had pets- he hasn’t ever had the time- so he’s not sure if this arrangement is something usual or something- well, something  _ Galo.  _ “You share a cat with your neighbor?”

“Yep!” Galo nods, fast and sure. “This way we can split the costs for vet visits and food and stuff like that, and Pal’s always got someone to  _ pal  _ around with.”

Lio stands up, because he will not stand for that sort of thing- he’s heard enough shitty  _ burn  _ and  _ smoke  _ and  _ fire _ puns from Meis and Gueira to last him ten lifetimes- and then he sits back down because standing was evidently a mistake and now the whole room is turning on its axis and teetering back and forth in big swoops. He’s feeling warm too, and not the  _ good  _ sort of warm that he’s felt in his chest for longer than he can remember (and doesn’t feel any longer, hasn’t felt in a week) or the  _ good  _ sort of warm that’s brought about by Galo sitting next to him, or the  _ good  _ sort of warm present in a meal or the sky or the sun; this is the hot and gritty, face red and hands shaking and stomach turning warmth, and he hates it, he hates it, he  _ hates  _ it.

“Oh  _ shit, _ ” Galo swears as he falls back into the cushions, all talk of cats done as his tone slips from playful into  _ trained professional _ . His hand hovers over Lio’s shoulder. “You feeling alright? Dizzy, dehydrated, lethargic?”

Yes, yes, yes.

“No, I’m fine. Good enough anyways,” Lio says, and that’s close to the truth and therefore all the emotional vulnerability he’s got to spare. Galo is apparently (and understandably if Lio is being honest) not very happy with that answer and it shows in the light prod of his finger into Lio’s arm followed by the return of the pout in full force, more genuine this time and right on the edge of becoming and actual frown.

“Ah, c’mon now!” he says. “We’re partners, right? If something’s bothering you you can tell me, and if you’re sick then you  _ have  _ to tell me so that we can plan around it.”

“Bossy,” Lio huffs, petulant.

“You would know,” Galo shoots back. He presses his hand to Lio’s forehead, light as can be and very gentle for someone so strong. Lio continues his quest to twist the sleeve of his (Galo’s?) jacket all the way around his arm and all the way up to the elbow all while studiously avoiding eye contact because he’s really  _ not  _ feeling all that great right now, and if he looks at Galo then he’ll be able to tell immediately and then he’ll try to make Lio  _ rest,  _ and they can’t well have that when there’s still so much work to be done.

Galo leans in closer, grumbling something that Lio doesn’t quite catch about average temperatures and the Burnish and the average temperatures of the Burnish, and how exactly would that translate now that no one has their flames? What’s his temperature supposed to be  _ now _ ? Is Lio sick? If so, how sick is he? Lio tunes him out. Nothing personal, but his attention span has been flitting about lately and the movement of Pal as she jumps from the windowsill suddenly seems like the most interesting thing that he’s ever seen happen  _ ever _ if for no reason other than he can’t predict it. Galo starts up a monologue about responsible medical practices and Pal makes one great leap across the floor, swooping over the carpet faster than Lio can see even though he’s been boring holes into the back of her head this whole time.

She provides a welcome distraction to himself, so he focuses on the way she moves and lives and breathes instead of the  _ warmth, _ doing his damndest to ignore the creeping, antsy feeling he's getting from sitting too still for too long. He succeeds in the slow phasing out of most of his thoughts until it’s just him on the couch, head empty and eyes fixed on Pal as she bats at her toy mouse again. Distantly he notices that Galo has stopped touching his forehead and is instead standing up fast enough to make the couch creak, clapping his hands together and making a vague gesture towards the kitchen.

“I’m going to make us some food,” he says, confident in a way that sounds like he’s been mulling over these words for the past thirty seconds, “And then we can eat and talk if you feel up to it. Yeah?”

It’s not really a question. Lio is watching Pal slowly inch closer to him, ears flat against her head. 

“... yeah,” he replies, distracted and for show. He’ll let Galo make the plans for now. God knows that once today’s worn into tomorrow and they’re back to it, Lio plans to work without pause until he can’t work any longer and he won’t be able to do that if he doesn’t at least make an attempt to recuperate. And as he’s preoccupied at the moment- there’s a cat, and his jacket’s much too big and the couch is swallowing him whole- he’s not really in the best position to be making rational decisions. But Lio trusts Galo; Galo will do what’s best for them both, because Galo’s proven time and time again that all he really wants is everyone- Lio, people who are not Lio, Lio again- to be alright.

“Great! This is gonna be so fucking good, just let me-“

He moves on over to the kitchen in a restrained jog that Lio suspects would have ballooned into a full-on sprint given the proper space and time, because Galo’s just like that. Pal finally stops her standoff with her toy mouse and jumps up onto the couch next to him and then in one graceful swirl settles right on his lap. All in all it’s quite a lot to process when he’s not working at his best, so he decides to make a last-ditch fall back onto instinct and lets one of his hands come to a hesitant rest on Pal’s head as the other abandons his sleeve to settle near her side. He’s still for a moment, listens to the clatter of Galo rustling through his cabinets and swearing exuberantly (because apparently being away from home for a week doesn’t exactly bode well for a number of perishable foods), and marvels at the ambient sounds of another human being when that other human being isn’t somehow thirty seconds from death. He’s still for a moment, then a moment more, then a moment more, and somewhere among it all he starts to breathe easy.

It’s strange. That’s strange. Pal insistently pushing her head up into his hand and purring loud and clear, Galo singing something that Lio doesn’t know but is positive is off-tune, the rush of traffic outside the window that seems worlds away, the slow softness of his existence at the moment- all that’s strange. His coat is strange and the couch is strange. Lio’s strange. 

He feels strange.

Galo unceremoniously dumps some water and pasta into a pot. Not five minutes later it begins to boil over, a mass of white bubbles that slither over the sides of a bright red pan and sizzle against the stovetop. The sun is bright and hot and nearby, so close that Lio feels if he were to look out the window it would be right there staring him down, and something about that makes him feel all at once cold and searing like a person who was a person and then was a person with flames sharing their insides and now is a person with a hard little husk where their heart should be. 

Facing that feeling’s not nearly as pleasant as petting a cat, so Lio will ignore it for now.

Galo finishes cooking but does not stop singing. He just gets louder and more determined to hit every variation of his current note _except_ for the correct one as he pulls down two ceramic bowls from the cabinets, one a dark green and the other bright blue. The noodles get scooped _out_ of the pot and _into_ them, and then Galo’s off and adding something else that Lio can’t quite see to one of the bowls while also just staring at the other. He throws in some salt and butter (is that still good? Does butter go bad within a week?) and then _looks,_ with his brow furrowed and his hand drumming against the countertop. Pal begins to paw at Lio’s leg and he realizes that he’s stopped petting her in favor of watching Galo- an unforgivable offense, if the way that she’s looking at him right now is any indication. He concedes. He continues to pet her. Galo seems to give up on whatever it was he was agonizing over and picks up the bowls, jamming in two forks that appeared out of nowhere and walking back over to the couch.

“I didn’t know what you wanted me to put on it,” he tells Lio apologetically as he hands over the bowl. “I, uh, don’t really know how you like any of your food, actually. Other than pizza and those granola bars they’ve been givin’ us.”

“This is fine,” Lio says. That is an understatement- Lio is very hungry, and if Galo had handed him a bowl full of uncooked spaghetti he would have been just as happy and probably just as willing to eat it. “I’m not picky when it comes to food.”

“Me neither!” Galo exclaims. “I’ll eat anything, which Aina says is gonna kill me someday but I haven’t died yet so that seems like a problem for future Galo.” 

He plops down on the other side of the couch, very close as the couch is very small and there’s nowhere else for him to go, and starts attacking his own pasta with the ferocity of someone who’s been living off of shitty granola bars and sheer force will over the past few days. Lio takes a moment more because Pal is still sitting prone on his lap and obstructing his movement in a way that he’s not sure how to move around. Lio’s never had a pet before- his lifestyle didn’t suit it and it’s not in his nature to be irresponsible, so this is new territory that he doesn’t know how to navigate and that he’s not sound enough at the moment to figure out.

He eventually settles on holding his arms out like the wings of a bird, bent sharp at ninety degrees as he struggles to spoon the pasta up into his mouth. Any pride that Lio has left has been shattered by now so he can’t even be bothered to care when he feels a lock of his hair come loose from his ponytail and tangle around his face or when he feels the telltale exhaustion tugging at the corners of his face that surely signify dark splotches running beneath his eyes- he must look like a mess and a half, but if he can’t let his guard down around  _ Galo  _ (and Pal, who is very soft and sure and quickly climbing the ranks of things he can trust) then where  _ can _ he?

“So,” Galo says after they’ve spent a minute doing nothing but eating. He’s already almost done with his bowl, something Lio is wholeheartedly terrified by. “I’m fucking  _ tired. _ ”

“Me too.”

“Yeah, I figured. And sick, maybe?”

There it is. Lio continues the slow and steady consumption of his noodles and makes it his mission to stare so hard at the back of Pal’s head that he could recognize it within the second, should the need ever arise. When he talks he talks slow, careful as can be like a person on a high-wire; his guard may be down but Lio has a permanent wall or two lingering somewhere up behind his eyes that he’s not sure will ever come down.

“I’m not sick,” he says. Carefully, keeping his tone even and his head down. “I’m not sick, just…”

Just  _ what _ ? What, what,  _ what _ is he? Tired? Exhausted? Worn out, Near-death, dying?

“Stressed?” Galo offers. 

Lio nods. “Stressed,” he echoes. That’s good. Succinct, correct.  _ Stressed. _

“That makes sense,” Galo sighs, placing his bowl down on his lap. The fork clatters back and forth in the ceramic, here to there and back again in a series of incessant and unending rattles. “We’ve got a lot to do, huh?”

That’s one way of saying it. They do have a lot to do, and Lio has been  _ stressed,  _ but he thinks that it would be strange if he weren’t considering the job that he’s decided to take upon himself. His responsibilities have always been the same weight as the world and have pressed on his shoulders accordingly, heavy like stones or the sky or a grocery bag filled with cans. At this point Lio’s nearing his wits end- the only things holding him together are the jacket he’s wearing and the heat of the sun, and he’s not even sure where to  _ begin _ discussing something like that so instead he sits and he eats awkwardly with his limbs jutting out at angles sharp enough to kill and his insides feeling rather like they’ve given up and gone to sleep.

“Yeah,” he settles on eventually. An agreement, certainly, and an uncreative one at that but also the first thing that he could think of that would put both himself and Galo at ease. 

“We’ll figure it out, you know,” Galo says, sounding so confident that Lio can’t help but believe him. “Even if it takes forever and we’ve gotta like, transfer our consciousness over into computers so we can keep running things, we’re going to get things in order, alright? You’re going to get to be happy. As many people as we can  _ make  _ happy are going to get to be happy. We’re gonna figure this out, and I’m not goin’ anywhere until we do.”

This is all very matter-of-fact. Galo reaches out at the end and presses his thumb into the space behind Pal’s ear, watching as her eyes go shut and her head tilts up into his palm. She looks very small and very fragile beside Galo, who is over six feet tall and could probably bench press two of Lio if he tried, and Lio wants to cry. Galo’s optimism is endearing; it’s painful, and it makes him feel like someone’s ripping through his skin, but the message and the determination and the simple force behind his impromptu speech is palpable. It’s palpable, and every word rings true and that hurts, so, so  _ much. _

“Transfer our consciousness to computers? Did you steal that from a movie?” he asks, voice wavering. Pal shifts on his lap. Lio feels freezing cold, colder than he’s ever felt, like there’s a hole running straight through his chest.

“Yep! I don’t remember the name of it, so it probably wasn’t very good,” Galo says. For the first time in a long time, Lio lets his eyes flick up to meet Galo’s. They are bright and dark and warm, and Lio is cold and rough and flitting about them like a moth drawn down into the flame. Then the bigger, better part of his brain informs him that flitting about flames never ended well for any moth, so he averts his eyes and looks at his lap, braving the odds enough to let go of his bowl with one hand and knead his thumb into the space behind Pal’s ear in the same way he’d seen Galo do earlier. She goes liquid, purring even more loudly than before, and against all odds Lio feels his face twisting into all the right precursors for a smile.

“It’s very optimistic of you to think like that,” he says. There’s no bite to the words, no burn, nothing harsh at all. He’s not fully sure what he’s feeling at the moment but it feels simultaneously precarious and grounding, like something he’s so attuned to that it’s worked itself right into his skin.

“Maybe.” Galo shrugs. “Maybe not. But I don’t think we can figure that out when we’ve had twelve hours of sleep between us over the past week.”

Lio snorts and eats another bite. He is very tired and still feels small, but at least he’s not as hungry anymore. “Two more and we’d each be getting one a day. If we get six more people in on this then between us all we’d have one good night’s sleep.”

Galo does not look impressed at his (admittedly much slower than it would be if he were wide awake) wit and pushes lightly at his shoulder. “If you try to tell me that one hour of sleep a day is enough then I’m never letting you pet Pal again.”

“Damn,” Lio sighs, scratching idly at Pal’s side as she stretches long and languid, rolling her head and twisting onto her side and shutting her eyes tight. He’s still utterly fascinated by her- she’s so  _ soft,  _ she’s so  _ soft  _ and nice and she seems to like him even though Lio knows nothing of animals other than their general shape- that if Galo had told him he’d have to sleep for two weeks straight to keep petting her, he’d tuck himself in and settle down for a fucking  _ nap.  _ But he can’t say that (he’s gotta play it cool) so he just huffs out another sigh, even more through and exhaustive than the last.

“You drive a hard bargain. Three hours it is, then. Non-consecutive.”

Galo gives him a sharp look made soft at the edges by amusement. “You’ll be gettin’ eight hours a night or else I won’t make you pasta either. Then you’ll be pasta-less  _ and  _ cat-less, and that would fucking  _ suck. _ ”

“And what about you?” Lio shoots back, because this is  _ slander  _ and if he’s getting called out then so is Galo. “If you’re making  _ me  _ get some rest then you’d better be sleeping too or I’m calling bullshit.”

Galo thumps a hand against his chest hard enough for the windows to rattle. “I don’t make others promise things that I wouldn’t do myself! So from here on out, you  _ and  _ me are gonna take care of ourselves and we’re gonna be  _ good  _ at it, alright? Or not alright! No arguments!”

You  _ and  _ me. That’s strange. He’s found lots of things  _ strange _ since he entered Galo’s apartment though, and as not one of them has been all that bad _ ,  _ Lio supposes that he will welcome this new development as well. He’s no stranger to impulsive decisions, just as he’s no stranger to ones long and drawn out; he’s found, as he’s bumbled his way through leadership, that there’s a time and a place for both. And this feels like the time and place impulse, like he should just  _ do  _ and keep  _ doing  _ and let the trajectory of his motions carry him where they will.

So he agrees. Easy as that, easy enough for now. 

“Alright,” he says. He huffs as loud and dramatic as the best of them. He eats his food and scratches at Pal’s side and marvels at the wonder of being so close to another living being. He thinks about Galo, and he thinks about what Galo said ( _ you  _ and  _ me, you  _ and  _ me) _ , and then he thinks about everyone else he knows and loves, and then he thinks about Galo again until it feels as though he can’t think of anything else ever again. “I guess I can live with that.”

It’s true. You  _ and  _ me.  _ You  _ and  _ me. You and me. _

Galo nods, satisfied, and falls back into the couch cushions with a great big  _ woosh  _ of air. Somewhere along the way he ends up sprawled over Lio’s shoulder, a heavy pocket of warmth and pressure pressed into his skin right above where his too-big jacket begins to slip from his collarbone. The air bites cold against skin and bone as he feels fledgling tremors of emotion wrack through his hands where they’re still wrapped around his bowl. He’s not cold  _ all  _ over, just where it matters- he finds that in most other places he feels too warm, in all the wrong ways and all the wrong places, with his face reddened by exhaustion and a sunburn on his forearms- and how embarrassing, how embarrassing is  _ that _ \- but all and all he doesn’t feel  _ terrible.  _ He no longer even feels  _ bad.  _ He finishes eating, and Galo takes his bowl and Lio thinks that he doesn’t feel  _ bad. _

Or that he’s felt a lot worse, anyways. And with any luck, now he’ll have plenty of time to not feel bad- if he picks up on some of Galo’s optimism, and if he keeps getting to pet cats, and if by some small miracle he gets to sleep a reasonable amount tonight, then one of these days he might actually even get to feel _good._ But that’ll come later. For now he wraps himself in his jacket and nudges Pal to the side and stands- Galo cooked, so he’s doing the dishes whether Galo wants him to or not. If it’s _you and me_ then they’re in this together, and if they’re in this together then-

Well then, Galo’s just going to have to get used to it. And that’s that.

**Author's Note:**

> If you made it this far, please consider leaving a comment!! I love hearing from you guys!!


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